THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND CRYING AND WHY OUR EYES WATER

 Why do we cry?

What are tears made of? 

     Tears are a clear liquid that fills your eyes when you experience significant pain, overwhelming emotion or the invasion of an irritant, but not all tears roll down your cheeks in uncontrollable streams. If you’ve ever touched your own eyeball, you’ll know that it’s always wet. This is because tears are produced by your eyes constantly. Usually, the volume of tears produced is low enough that they don’t overflow out of your eyes. Instead they’re drained by tiny holes in the upper and lower eyelids called tear ducts. Tears contain the salts potassium chloride and sodium chloride, enzymes, lipids and essential minerals such as calcium and magnesium. Lysozyme is one of the most abundant enzymes in tears, as the first line of defence against bacteria. This protein works to kill any bacteria that enters the eye, which can easily happen when you rub your eyes with your hands. But not all of the benefits of crying are physical. Psychologically, we feel differently about others when we see them cry. It can show a person’s vulnerability, and studies show that during emotional arguments, people often become less aggressive towards others when witnessing them crying. By releasing tears you’re also more likely to receive help from others, bond with them and be trusted. 

Less than one per cent of your tears is salt.

Why do we cry with happiness?

     Crying is a release of emotion, but this emotion doesn’t always have to be sadness. Have you ever been reunited with a close friend and burst into tears as soon as they arrived? Or perhaps when it was the happiest moment of your life? Although you know when you are happy and sad, the brain can become overwhelmed by influxes of such strong emotions. Both positive and negative emotions are dealt with in similar ways by releasing tears. The amygdala is the part of the brain that processes emotional and behavioural responses. Just before you cry with happiness, the amygdala sends a signal to the glands in the eyes to make them produce more tears. When these tears are released from the eyes, the hormone oxytocin is also released in the body, working to calm the body by instigating physical changes such as reducing blood pressure. In the same way that sad crying relieves the negative emotions felt, happy crying stops the brain being overwhelmed with opposing changes in your mental state. Happy tears are sweeter tasting because they’re less acidic. 

Tears are made up of over 1,500 different proteins.

Types of tears:

The act of crying can have negative connotations, but not all crying is the same. Some tears are produced during highly stressful and emotional events, while others are formed after a single cut into an onion. There are three types of tears, differentiated by their triggers and impact on the body: basal, emotional and reflex tears. Each type also varies in its composition. Basal tears are always present on your eyeballs. They are made up of three layers, serving as a protective coating for delivering nutrients to the eyes. Without these tears, your eyeballs would dry out. 

     While basal tears work to keep small amounts of physical debris out of the eyes, emotional tears relieve stress and help to stabilise mental health. Stress chemicals have been detected in emotional tears, meaning that the act of crying can literally flush overwhelming feelings away. The third type is reflex tears. These are mostly made of water, which is released in higher volumes when an irritant such as a small insect – or the enzymes and acid released by onions when they’re cut – makes contact with the eyeball. More antibodies, which are defence proteins of the immune system, are released in these tears to fight any harmful cells that might enter the eye.    

Onions release sulphur when cut, which forms the irritant sulphuric acid when it makes contact with the water on your eyes, causing more tears to be produced. 

How basal tears create a protective layer (TEARY-EYED ANATOMY)

1 LACRIMAL GLAND: One of these glands is located above each eye. Here the bulk of tears are continuously released onto the outside of the eyeball.

2 MEIBOMIAN GLAND: Around 30 of these glands line the lower eyelid. These and the 40 on the upper eyelid release oil into tears.

3 CONJUNCTIVAL GOBLET CELLS: These cells produce a protein called mucin, which lubricates the eye and prevents the eyelids from sticking to the surface of the eyeball.

4 MUCOUS LAYER: This inner layer contains a protein called mucin, which is sticky and keeps the tear film attached to the eyeball.

5 AQUEOUS LAYER: The biggest portion of the tear film is water. This layer is 98.2 per cent water and 1.8 per cent solids to hydrate and nourish the eye.

6 LIPID LAYER: When excreted from the meibomian glands, the oily layer prevents the water in the tears from evaporating and makes the eyeball’s surface smooth.

7 EYELASHES: The small hairs that stick out from your eyelids reduce the movement of air around the eyes so that tears don’t evaporate quickly.

8 EVEN SPREAD: Each time you blink, the three-layered tear film is spread evenly across the eyeball’s surface by the eyelids.

9 TEAR DUCTS: These passages carry tears from the eye into the nose. Here the old tear film can exit the body by evaporation or re-enter the body.

MY PARLIAMENT MY PRIDE

 A New Parliament Building For A New India

     Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated India’s new Parliament building on May 28, 2023. The new Parliament building is not just a physical structure but a symbol of India’s democratic spirit, heritage and culture. The new building will serve as an emblem of India’s glorious past, present and future as a world leader. 

     In its 75th year of independence, India has proudly presented its new Parliament building to the world. This building is constructed by Indians for Indians. 

Why was a new Parliament Building needed? 

The Parliament of India is the highest law-making body in India. The Parliament makes the laws that everyone in the country has to follow. The Parliament is made up of elected representatives called members of Parliament (MPs). The MPs discuss and debate a topic before making a new law. This requires a place for them to sit and conduct meetings. This place is called the Parliament House. 

     The previous Parliament House is a heritage building that was constructed in 1927. The Parliament House was designed by Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker. 

     The building is now old and showing signs of wear and tear. It also needed more space as the number of MPs is expected to increase in the future. For this reason, the Government of India decided to build a new Parliament building. This new building is better in terms of space, technology, amenities, safety, parking facilities and offices.

Let us explore the New Parliament Building: 

The new Parliament building is shaped like a triangle and covers an area of 65,000 square metres.

The building has three main gates. These are the Gyan Dwar, Shakti Dwar and Karma Dwar. These are separate entrances for important persons such as MPs and visitors.  

The new building has 888 seats in the Lok Sabha chamber and 384 seats in the Rajya Sabha chamber.  

The Lok Sabha Hall is three times bigger than the old one. It is peacock-themed based on India’s national bird.  

The Rajya Sabha Hall is lotus-themed based on India’s national flower.  

The building has ultra-modern office spaces. These spaces will use smart display screens, fingerprint sensors and other digitally-advanced audio-visual systems.  

The new building is designed to be safe from earthquakes. It is eco-friendly and uses clean energy. It will also focus on rainwater harvesting, solar panels and waste management.  

The public entrances have three galleries. The Sangeet Gallery showcases India’s traditional dances and music. The Sthapatya Gallery showcases India’s architectural heritage. The Shilp Gallery showcases the unique handicraft traditions of India’s many states.  

The new building also presents a unique union of tradition and modernity through symbols such as Sengol and Foucault’s Pendulum. 

The Sengol: Prime Minister Modi placed a historic object called Sengol in the Lok Sabha chamber of the new Parliament building. The name Sengol comes from the Tamil word for righteousness, "Semmai". The Sengol is a sacred sceptre made of gold and silver. A sceptre is a decorated rod carried by kings or queens on special occasions as a symbol of their power. The Sengol is 5 feet in length. There is a small statue of Nandi at the top of the Sengol. Nandi is the bull deity associated with Lord Shiva.

      The Sengol has a long history. This history goes back to the time when the Chola dynasty ruled over parts of South India and Sri Lanka between the 9th and 13th centuries. The Cholas had a tradition of passing down the Sengol sceptre from one king to the next. This was a symbol of the transfer of power and legality. On Aug. 14, 1947, the Sengol was presented to India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. The Sengol has since been kept at a museum. Now, the government has decided to put it in the new Parliament building. This has been done to highlight the importance of this historical object in India’s cultural heritage. The Sengol’s presence in the Lok Sabha chamber signifies the connection between the past and the present. It also shows the country’s commitment to its traditions and democratic ideals. 

Foucault’s Pendulum: Another interesting feature of the new Parliament building that has caught everyone’s attention is Foucault’s pendulum. It is named after the French scientist Leon Foucault. Foucault invented this pendulum to show that the Earth is rotating. The pendulum is a ball hanging from a string. Foucault’s pendulum has a heavy ball hanging from a height with a long string. It swings back and forth but slowly starts to change its direction. For example, when the pendulum swings in a north-south direction, it gradually shifts towards the eastwest direction. This shows that the Earth is rotating. The pendulum installed in the Parliament House is quite tall. It is about 22 metres high when suspended from the ceiling and weighs around 36 kilograms. It also has a power supply to make sure it swings smoothly. The pendulum was built fully in India. It has been installed in the gallery section of the Constitution Hall. The pendulum represents how India is connected to the universe. 

HAMID: THE PERSONIFICATION OF UNSELFISH LOVE

 Eidgah

     Eidgah, translated as ‘TheFestival of Eid’, is a very popular story by Munshi Premchand, one of India’s most influential Hindi writers of the last century. Written in 1938, the story is a sensitive account of a poor boy’s adventures at a village fair on the day of the Eid festival. The central character of the story is Hamid, a four-year-old boy who lives with his aged grandmother; having lost both his parents the previous year. 

     The story begins with an excited group of boys getting ready to accompany their elders to the Eidgah (prayer grounds) three miles away, on the long-awaited festival morning. Among them is little Hamid, who is described as thin and famished-looking and poorly dressed – he has no shoes on his feet, and wears a soiled, tattered cap whose golden thread has turned black.

     In contrast to his companions, who are from rich families and have plenty of pocket money to blow up on goodies at the Eid fair, he has just three coins in his pocket. However, he is the happiest of the boys. With all the innocence of childhood, he implicitly believes what his grandmother has told him about his parents – that his father has gone to earn money and will return with sack loads of silver and that his mother has gone to Allah to get lovely gifts for him. He is eagerly awaiting their return, so that he can then fulfil all his heart’s desires and have more than his insensitive companions, who are constantly teasing and tantalising him with their toys. 

     Despite his childish innocence, Hamid on several occasions also displays a maturity and sensitivity beyond his years. For instance, realising that his grandmother is distressed about letting him go to the Eidgah unescorted (while the other boys have their fathers with them), he consoles her with the assurance that he will be the first to get back. 

     At the Eid fair, due to lack of money, he can only stand and watch, while his companions enjoy swing and roundabout rides, buy attractive clay toys, and gorge on sweets to their hearts’ content. Naturally, like any other child, he also longs for these things; however, he finds consolation by telling himself that sweets are bad for health and the flimsy toys are a waste of money that give only momentary pleasure. 

     A noteworthy feature of Hamid’s character is his lack of vindictiveness. His natural tendency is to return good for evil. Even after the other boys have mocked and humiliated him, his reaction is to tell himself that when his parents have returned with riches, he will give each of his tormentors a basket full of toys to teach them how to treat friends. 

     Overcoming temptations, Hamid eventually opts to spend his precious three coins not on sweets or toys for himself, but on a pair of tongs for his grandmother, as he remembers how she burns her fingers on the griddle while baking rotis everyday. The other boys tease Hamid for his purchase, extolling the virtues of their toys over his tongs. 

     We now get to see Hamid’s intelligence as he comes up with quick-witted retorts about the superiority of his iron tongs over their clay toys. His arguments are so convincing that the boys soon believe that Hamid has had the best bargain, and even offer to exchange their items for his – which he refuses. The story ends on a touching note as his grandmother, on receiving the gift, is so overwhelmed with emotion, that she bursts into tears and invokes Allah’s blessings on her grandchild. 

     Little Hamid, with his selfless and caring nature and his gift of imagination that keeps him happy even in the midst of poverty, is one of Premchand’s most loveable creations.

15th June is observed as World Elder Abuse Awareness day to raise awareness about the mistreatment and neglect of older adults and promote the importance of their well-being and dignity. Let us all be sensitive and caring towards elderly people in the family and around us.  

DO YOU KNOW

 What are brown dwarfs?

     Brown dwarfs are celestial objects that are too large to be called planets and too small to be called stars. They have a mass less than 0.075 that of the sun, which is around 75 times the mass of Jupiter. Like stars, brown dwarfs are believed to form from a collapsing cloud of gas and dust. But as the cloud collapses, it does not form an object dense enough at its core to trigger a nuclear fusion. 

     In the case of a star, hydrogen is converted into helium by nuclear fusion. This is what fuels a star and causes it to shine. 

     Brown dwarfs, on the other hand, are not massive enough to ignite fusion. Hence, they are also called 'failed stars'.

     Dimmer and cooler than stars, brown dwarfs are elusive and hard to find. Infra red sky surveys and other techniques have however, helped scientists detect hundreds of them. They are believed to be as common as stars in the universe. Some of them are companions to stars and many are isolated objects.

     First discovered in 1995, brown dwarfs were hypothesised in 1663 by American astronomer Shiv Kumar.

     Despite their name, brown dwarfs are not brown. They appear from deep red to magenta, depending on their temperature.

BATTLE THAT CHANGED HISTORY

 Battle of Pavankhind

     The Adilshah of Bijapur was vexed. A young Maratha named Shivaji had grabbed many of his forts. To make matters worse, he had killed one of his most experienced generals, Afzal Khan, and inflicted a crushing defeat on the Bijapur army at Kolhapur. 

Thirteenth of July: In 1660, the Adilshah sent a force under the command of Siddi Jauhar to recover the fort of Panhala from Shivaji. Siddi Jauhar laid siege to the fort. For five months, Shivaji and his men resisted, but their provisions were running out. They had no choice but to find a way to escape. 

     Shivaji fled the fort under the cover of darkness on 13 July, 1660. Accompanied by a fleet-footed band of hardy soldiers, he hastened towards Vishalgad, about 65 km away across the ghats. As soon as the enemy camp got wind of the escape, they set off in hot pursuit. They caught up with the fleeing Marathas and captured Shivaji. But he turned out to be an imposter – a brave barber, Shiva Kashid, who had volunteered to disguise himself as Shivaji to buy him some time.

     Siddi Jauhar sent his son-in-law Siddi Masood after them again. By this time, the Marathas had reached Ghodkhind, a mountain gorge so narrow that only fews oldiers could pass at a time. Shivaji’s commander Baji Prabhu Deshpande decided to take a last stand against the enemy while the leader made it to the safety of Vishalgad fort.

Unto the last: It was an unequal battle. 300 Maratha soldiers fought tooth and nail until their last breaths to prevent the mightier Bijapuri army from advancing further. Baji Prabhu waited to hear canon fire from Vishalgad —sign of Shivaji having reached the fort safely— before breathing his last. Siddi Masood and his men scrambled through the pass and attacked Vishalgad fort, but they were repulsed by a young officer named Rango Narayan. 

Aftermath: Shivaji honoured Baji Prabhu’s sacrifice by renaming the pass as Pavankhind (Sacred Pass). Rango Narayan was also rewarded for his loyalty. The battle of Pavankhind was the last major face-off between the Marathas and the Adilshahi Sultanate. It became clear that the Sultan could do little to check the rise of the Marathas. Soon Shivaji came to the notice of Aurangzeb who regarded him with mounting unease. 

Legacy: The legend of Baji Prabhu’s bravery inspires adventurous youths to relive history by trekking from Panhala to Vishalgad in July during the monsoon. A memorial is dedicated to Baji Prabhu at Panhala fort while another pays homage to the fallen heroes at Pavankhind.

LOOKING AT THE BETTER PART OF LIFE

 Positives in negatives

     A young woman was sitting at her dining table, worried about taxes to be paid, house-work to be done and to top it all, her extended family was coming over for festival lunch the next day. She was therefore not feeling very thankful at that time. 

     As she turned her gaze sideways, she noticed her young daughter scribbling furiously into her notebook.

     “My teacher asked us to write a paragraph on ‘Negative Thanksgiving’ for homework today,” said the daughter. 

     “She asked us to write down things that we are thankful for; things that make us feel not so good in the beginning, but turnout to be good after all.” 

     With curiosity, the mother peeked into the book. This is what her daughter wrote: “I’m thankful for final exams, because that means school is almost over. I’m thankful for bad-tasting medicine, because it helps me feel better. I’m thankful for waking up to alarm clocks, because it means I’m still alive.” 

     It then dawned on the mother, that she had a lot of things to be thankful for! She thought again... She had to pay taxes, but that meant she was fortunate to be employed. She had house-work to do, but that meant she had a shelter to live in. She had to cook lunch for her many family members, but that meant she had a family with whom she could celebrate. 

     What is the positive in your negatives? Look at the better part of life today and make your every day a great day.

THE WORLD'S ONLY FLOATING NATIONAL PARK

The Keibul Lamjao National Park

     The Loktak Lake, a large natural freshwater lake in the Bishnupur district of Manipur, has a unique feature – it contains the world’s only floating national park, the Keibul Lamjao National Park. Considering the ecological status and its biodiversity values, the Loktak Lake was designated as a wetland site of international importance under the Ramsar Convention on March 23, 1990. The lake, with a surface area varying from 250 sq km to 500 sq km during the monsoon, is located in Moirang, a small town about 45 km south of the state capital, Imphal. It is fed by the Manipur river and several tributaries. 

     The surface of the Loktak is dotted with thousands of floating islands, known in the local language as phumdis, which are actually circular landmasses made of vegetation, soil, and organic matter (at different stages of decomposition) that have thickened into solid form over the years. Thousands of fishermen live in bamboo huts built on these phumdis. The largest phumdi, spanning an area of 40 sq km and located at the southeastern end of the lake, is home to the Keibul Lamjao National Park, which is the last refuge of Manipur’s state animal – the endangered brow-antlered deer or Eld’s deer, locally known as Sangai. 

     The reserve area was designated a national park in 1966 specifically to preserve these deer, which were on the verge of extinction. The sangai’s hooves have adapted to the island’s spongy ground. The distinctive nature of the park is that it is too deep to be a marsh and too shallow to be a lake. It is grounded to the lake bed during the dry season, but gets submerged for a few days during the monsoon. During this period, the animals in the park move to higher hilly areas. It emerges and floats to the surface fully a few days later. About twenty percent of its thickness floats on the lake, above the surface, which supports the weight of large animals. Apart from the sangai, other animal species found on the park include the hog deer, common otter, wild boar, jungle cat, musk shrew, and sambar. 

     The Loktak is a bird-watcher’s paradise, with numerous birds such as the ruddy shell duck, black kite, northern hill myna, lesser skylark, East Himalayan pied kingfisher, blue-winged teal, and sarus crane, among others, being commonly sighted in the region. 

     For the local people, the Loktak is no mere lake but their lifeline, providing not only water for drinking, power generation, and irrigation, but also edible plants, roots and fruits growing on the phumdi for food. 

     Revered as Loktak Lairembi(Goddess Loktak) and Ema(mother), the lake represents the fountainhead of Manipuri culture. However, the lake and its surrounding areas are today facing serious problems caused by pollution, deforestation, and soil erosion, which in turn is threatening the survival of the sangai deer.